A little Grace brings joy for the holiday season and beyond

She is asleep at my feet as I write, curled into a ball, legs tucked beneath her. Her head is on one of my old sweatshirts.

She is an 8-week-old puppy and I am very taken with her.

Grace, a mixed Aussie shepherd and (probably) Lab, came from a litter of nine saved by the California Labradors, Retrievers and More Rescue organization after the mother and pups were abandoned in an empty house. A caring family in Jamul served as foster parents and graciously allowed us to visit a week ago Friday night.

There in a spacious pen inside a garage, the puppies, a squirming mass of noses and fur and whines, mostly tumbled across the smallest one in the litter, a pup who was quieter, but who nipped back against a brother’s ill-placed foot.

She was the one.

She is, I think it is called, a blue merle with gray and black splotches overall and a brown muzzle and paws and brown eyes — she is also gorgeous.

Merle is a coat pattern caused by a specific gene. While common to Australian shepherds, many other dog breeds may display it as well: various sheepdogs and collies, sometimes Pomeranians do, and it is a mark of a Catahoula leopard dog, like my pal Koshi, the Love on a Leash therapy dog who greets me on her driveway whenever I take a bass lesson from her master.

Her rescue organization (found here: www.labsandmore.org) aptly named each of the siblings a Christmas Pup. Christmas Pup — Elf. Christmas Pup — Holly. You get the idea. To them, Grace was “Christmas Pup — Angel.”

That is a pretty name and we thought about leaving it alone. Angel is fitting of the season and of a great gift. But of course, the puppy no more recognized that name than if she had been called Eleanor Roosevelt (come to think of it, that wouldn’t be a bad name either).

That was it. Grace. Gracie. George Burns and Gracie Allen. Princess Grace Kelly.

We decided that Grace was perfect, it means so many things: God’s unmerited love; effortless movement; a prayer of thanks over a meal; mercy; a trill or musical ornament; any one of the three sisters of Greek mythology, Aglaia (splendor), Euphrosyne (mirth), and Thalia (good cheer), who personify charm and beauty and bestow talent on mortals; and, it is the name of my engaging (and feisty) next door neighbor, Grace.

Before the naming ceremony last Saturday, we knocked at neighbor Grace’s door. Her husband greeted us and called upstairs to tell his wife she had visitors.

Grace, who has trouble with stairs, rode her chairlift down, and once she realized what the bundle in my arms was, she started oohing and cooing.

After a few minutes, I asked Grace if she would be offended if we named the puppy after her.

Of course not, she replied, that would be so wonderful, “she’s royalty.”